Kohli Century Puts India 2-0 Up In Delhi

Kohli Century Puts India 2-0 Up In Delhi

Virat Kohli celebrates his century en route to India's emphatic eight-wicket victory over England in Delhi

©REUTERS/Adnan Abidi (INDIA - Tags: SPORT CRICKET) Picture Supplied by Action Images

India 238-2 (Kohli 112no, Gambhir 84no) beat
England 237 (Vinay Kumar 4-30) by 8 wickets
Second One-Day International, Delhi
Scorecard

India produced an outstanding all-round performance to beat England by eight wickets in the second One-Day International in Delhi to go 2-0 up in the five-match series.

India prevented England from consistently building partnerships and bowled them out for 237 before an unbeaten century from Virat Kohli guided them home with almost 15 overs to spare.

Gautam Gambhir also scored an unbeaten half-century as the pair capitalised on a poor day at the office for England to add an unbroken 209-run partnership for the third wicket.

Set 238 to win, they made a poor start as openers Parthiv Patel (12) and Ajinkya Rahane (14) fell to Tim Bresnan after Patel had been dropped by Graeme Swann off Bresnan early on as England continued to fumble around in the field.

Bresnan would later spill Gambhir off Steven Finn and that miss proved costly as the left-hander went on to score 84 in 90 balls, overcoming a slightly edgy beginning to strike and place the ball with the precision and finesse he is renowned for.

He hit ten fours in his innings while Kohli hit 16 fours, the pick of them a sublimely timed and placed cover drive after which no fielders moved.

He faced just 98 balls in all on his way to 116 not out - his seventh ODI century - and compiled an innings that delighted his home crowd.

Fittingly, it was he who hit the winning runs when he smacked Jade Dernbach imperiously through midwicket for four as India blasted home in 36.4 overs - Gambhir and Kohli having been together for one ball shy of 30 of them.

In contrast, on four occasions, England lost two wickets in quick succession as each time they began to recover, they were pegged back as Ranganath Vinay Kumar returned four for 30.

After both sides named unchanged line-ups from the first match in Hyderabad, where India won by 126 runs, England won the toss but were soon in big trouble as Alastair Cook and Craig Kieswetter departed before a run had been put on the board.

Cook chopped Praveen Kumar to Ravindra Jadeja before Kieswetter guided Vinay Kumar to Virat Kohli at wide slip and England's prospects did not get much better when Jonathan Trott edged the same bowler to Mahendra Singh Dhoni for 34. He had helped inject some momentum into the innings with three fours in as many balls of Praveen in the fifth over but his dismissal rather set the pattern for the innings - rebuild, accelerate, stop, rebuild again.

England passed 100 in emphatic style when Kevin Pietersen (46) hit Jadeja to two straight sixes as he used his feet effectively in the 23rd over as he and Ravi Bopara (36) began a counter-attack but were both dismissed with the score on 121; Pietersen caught by Dhoni off Umesh Yadav - just back into the attack - and Bopara trapped in front by Ravichandran Ashwin.

England's best phase of the innings then followed as Samit Patel, who made 42, and Jonathan Bairstow, who made 36, put on 86 for the sixth wicket with a combination of smart running and from Patel in particular, big hitting as he hit two sixes, one off Ashwin and one off Jadeja before he was trapped in front by a Vinay Kumar delivery that kept low on him. Almost immediately afterwards, Bairstow mistimed his hit down the ground and was well caught by Kohli in the deep off Jadeja as India's spinners again clinched the key wickets.

It was too much to ask of England's lower order to get them out of jail and with Vinay Kumar in top form, Bresnan (12), Swann (7) and Dernbach (3) fell cheaply, the former to Vinay and the latter to a run out leaving Finn unbeaten on six.

The third game in the five-match series is in Mohali on 20th October.

© Cricket World 2011